


The Wind Has Blawin My Plaid Awa

by The_Midnight_Girl



Category: Fire and Hemlock - Diana Wynne Jones
Genre: F/M, Gen, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-17
Updated: 2020-12-17
Packaged: 2021-03-11 02:41:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,689
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28137867
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Midnight_Girl/pseuds/The_Midnight_Girl
Summary: Polly prepares for Finals, while Tom is away touring with the Quartet. Somehow, they're also trying to plan a wedding, which involves challenges for both of them.
Relationships: Thomas Lynn/Polly Whittacker
Comments: 6
Kudos: 22
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	The Wind Has Blawin My Plaid Awa

**Author's Note:**

  * For [BethFromTheBurg](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BethFromTheBurg/gifts).



‘Quite impossible,’ Polly said, out of the blue.

‘What is?’ Fiona replied. ‘That there’s barely two weeks to go before the start of finals, that your Thomas Lynn is somewhere roaming around Europe six weeks before your wedding, or that you think eggs magically scramble themselves if you wave a spoon above them in benediction?’

Polly looked down at the pan on the hob, where four sort-of-fried eggs stared up at her reproachfully. ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘... Eggs benediction?’ 

Fiona laughed. ‘Well, which was it?’

‘All of them. Can we just put off finals?’

‘There’s probably a rule against it. It’s Thomas Lynn, isn’t it?’

‘He wrote to me, sort of. From Tromso.’

‘Norway?’

‘Mmm,’ Polly said. ‘The Quartet has three nights there, or they would be nights if it got dark before 11pm.’

‘What did he write?’

Polly scooped the eggs onto by-now-cold toast, and set one of the plates down in front of Fiona, before taking the other for herself. ‘Nothing, really. He sent their flyer.’ She drew it out of the envelope that was already on the table. The leaflet, glossy, showed the Dumas Quartet standing on a steep fir-covered hillside that seemed mildly surprised not to be covered in snow. Thomas Lynn, and his cello, were the focal point of the photograph, the one wrapped sinuously around the other. ‘It’s very scenic.’

‘So’s the landscape,’ Fiona said.

Polly snorted. ‘That’s not what’s impossible, though. He asked me to organise his suit for the wedding.’

‘Lazy so-and-so. Though I suppose it is difficult to do from halfway up the side of a fjord.’

‘He says that it can’t be made of fabric, or it will irritate his skin, and that it can’t be stitched, or it will prick him on our wedding day.’

Fiona blinked slowly. ‘That does sound like the sort of thing you and he say to each other a lot.’ She had never quite grasped what had happened the previous Halloween, and Polly had given up trying to explain it. ‘Why don’t you write back and ask him for the moon on a stick?’

‘I have to revise for finals,’ Polly offered. It sounded weak.

‘You’re going to put off writing a letter to your fiance so that you can do the revision you’ve been putting off for a month?’

‘Motivation comes in unexpected forms.’

Polly had not, in fact, been putting off revision, but since everyone else seemed to be doing so, she’d felt it best to claim that she was. She suspected Fiona was doing the same, given that nobody could leave books around with that much artful randomness without working at it. Now, however, she was staring at an article analysing the thematic influences in the works of Edmund Spenser without taking in a single word. Was Tom just playing, or was there still a threat to them? Could they mess this up? It worried her. 

She checked in her diary for his itinerary. After Tromso, they were returning to Oslo for a week. A letter would be sure to catch up with him there. 

_ After the hardware shop proved to be unsafe – what with giants and goblins knowing that he lived there – Tan Coul needed to find a new home _ .  _ And he asked Hero for advice on where and what it could be. _

_ ’It needs to be somewhere safe,’ she said. ‘But convenient. It must be close to where trouble might be, because we might be called into action at any time, but it must be far enough away that trouble cannot find it easily. It should be secure, but welcoming. It should be homely, but impressive.’ _

_ ‘I see,’ said Tan Coul. And he took out his axe, and from the space between the sea and the beach he cut out an acre of land. Hero was very impressed, because she did not know that he knew how to do anything like that. Then he took a pine cone, and from it fashioned a house, and set it on the acre of land. And because it was neither in the sea, nor on the shore, nobody who did not know exactly where to step could see it.  _

_ It was a house, Hero declared, where she and Tan Coul, and their friends, could be safe. _

‘E. R. Eddison,’ Polly sighed, collapsing into an armchair that was itself teetering on the verge of exhaustion. ‘Who sets an exam on Eddison?’

‘Didn’t go well?’ Fiona asked.

‘Oh, it was fine. It just dragged on and on forever, like every time I thought I was finished I had to start again.’

‘Postcard for you.’ Fiona handed it to her. Four separate pictures of Oslo by night, with the word ‘Oslo’ written between them to help with identification.

_ ‘That axe must be very sharp.’ _ Tom had written.  _ ‘How’s the sewing? I’m looking forward to wearing the suit.’ _

Polly wrinkled her nose. ‘That’s not very helpful,’ she said to the postcard.

That night, Polly dreamt. She was not really the sort of person who remembered her dreams very often, but this time she woke and immediately scribbled down the details, only to find, the next morning, that she still recalled it perfectly. 

_ I was asleep in bed, only to be woken by the cold air on my skin. Tom was there, in her room, pulling the covers off her bed. ‘Aren’t you in Czechoslovakia?’ I asked.  _

_ Tom put his finger to his lips, then to mine, and started to take off his shirt. _

That was the moment that she had woken, partly because she had dumped her bed-clothes onto the floor, and hastily scribbled down her note.

Looking at it, the next morning, two thoughts struck her. Firstly, she wondered where her subconscious had plucked ‘Czechoslovakia’ from, given that the Dumas Quartet was touring Scandinavia. The second thought, though, was more interesting, and required confirmation. She didn’t have a postcard, so she stuck down an envelope and scrawled on the back of it. ‘ _ Am I allowed to be sentimental on our wedding day?’  _

The answer came as a telegram, three days later.  _ Weddings are inherently sentimental stop Hans N. Molt. _ Polly had not received a telegram before, which combined with the Germanic codename made her feel very much like she was in a spy novel, which wasn’t quite the sort of hero she thought either of them should aim to be.

Tom wore a perfectly ordinary suit, hired from Moss Bros, on their wedding day. It was a small affair, as Polly decided she wanted neither Reg nor Ivy there, so it was just Fiona, Nina and Granny on her side of the chapel, and Ann, Ed and Sam with Tom. Both of them had issues with immediate family. 

Polly felt misgivings as she walked up the aisle, Granny at her side. It felt ordinary. ‘Are we really getting married now, here?’ she whispered to Tom as she reached the front of the chapel. It was all so very ordinary.

Tom smiled at her, and shook his head. He glanced up at the priest ‘This is really most irregular,’ the priest harrumphed.

‘Close your eyes,’ Tom said in a quiet voice, taking hold of both her hands in his, ‘And take a breath’. 

From nowhere, the music swirled around her. Ann, and Sam, and Ed, they must have been hiding their instruments out of sight in the pew, but how Tom could both be holding her hands and playing the cello was something she would never know. But she could hear him – indisputably his playing, for she had heard it often enough and listened well enough that she would not mistake anyone else for him – providing the centre. The violins soared, the viola beneath, filling in the gaps. For a moment, she smelt a hint of laurel in the air, but then it was gone, replaced with a sturdier scent of pine.

‘You can look now,’ Tom said. 

Polly opened her eyes. The music faded away, but they were in a new world. A clearing in a dense evergreen forest. The others were around them, but they seemed distant. ‘Do they know?’ she asked.

‘Perhaps, to a greater or lesser extent. Have you my suit ready?’

Polly smiled. ‘Oh yes,’ she said. ‘I haven’t sewn it, and it’s not made of fabric, but you’ll be wearing it tonight. What about my home?’

‘Tomorrow,’ Tom promised. ‘But you must tell me if you don’t want it.’

‘If we could start?’ the priest said, irritably.

‘For him, we’ve just been staring into each other’s eyes,’ Tom said, and Polly realised that was, in fact, the case. 

‘Sorry,’ she said, to the priest. ‘Please, go ahead.’

‘Dearly…’

It was well into the afternoon the next day before they left the guesthouse, and walked through Regent’s Park. ‘Where are we going?’ Polly asked, once it became obvious that the answer wasn’t ‘The Zoo’.

Tom smiled. ‘Home, I hope.’

They walked past the Mosque at the western edge of the park, to the canal, and then along the towpath under Baker Street, before Polly finally realised.

‘It’s more teak than pine, I’m afraid,’ Tom said. Sandwiched between one of the ugliest electricity substations imaginable and some abandoned warehouses was a widening of the Grand Union Canal into a basin where narrowboats moor end-on to the quay. Polly picked it out immediately, a medium-sized boat with a superstructure painted matt black with red and orange piping. The paintwork looked relatively fresh, but the metalwork around the windows and on the cabin-top showed signs of age.

‘You took your axe…’ she said.

‘...Cello. And carved… or bought... a space between water and land.’

‘Halfway between nowhere and now-here.’

Tom looked at her. ‘Is it impressive enough?’

Polly nodded. ‘Is it homely enough?” she asked.

Tom looked thoughtful. ‘I’ve always thought that a home was something you made, not something you found.’

‘You mean that she needs some work.’

‘Here and there.’ Tom paused for a few heartbeats. ‘I didn’t choose her because of the name, I promise.’

Polly hadn’t looked, before. When she did, she couldn’t help but laugh. ‘Carterhaugh,’ she said. ‘Perfect.’

  
  



End file.
